


Chatoyant

by Nanibgal



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Pre-Betrayal, gonna tag this as violence against animals though, good times at backupsmore u, no cats were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6358708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanibgal/pseuds/Nanibgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chatoyant: adj. Resembling a cat's eye.</p><p>Once in college, Fiddleford's roommate looked after a black cat with golden eyes and a pronged tail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chatoyant

During Fiddleford McGucket’s freshman year of college there was a black cat who lived outside of their dorm. Stanford had taken an immediate liking to it, not in the least because its tail was forked at the end. 

Fiddleford remembered, vaguely, reading in a book of Japanese yōkai and the story of a Nekomata, an ancient cat with a split tail and contempt for humans. His grandmother had warned him of the Cat Sidhe when he was a boy listening to the stories she’d heard as a girl growing up in Ireland. 

The golden-eyed cat with the pronged tail unnerved him on a subconscious level, but he couldn’t in good conscious tell his roommate to leave it alone or chase it off himself, not when he saw how content Stanford was to run a six-fingered hand down the cat’s fur, from head to odd tail. 

And in any case, he was a man of science and reason- the cat suffered a mutation just as benign as Stanford’s. He had too much on his mind to worry about his roommate bonding with an abandoned cat.

Every time he saw that damn thing its eyes followed him, and its tail swished back and forth as if to show off its weirdness. Even when Stanford was playing with it by its little home near the hedges, it made sure to give Fiddleford one withering glare before going back to enjoy Stanford’s spoiling.

No, he decided he didn’t really like that cat overmuch. At all, really. But anything with a deformity was close to Stanford’s heart, so he kept quiet about his superstitious misgivings.

When Stanford shuffled into their dorm late one with his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast, Fiddleford predicted the words that would come out of Stanford’s mouth: the cat went missing, somewhere in the cold snow covered campus. Fiddleford did his best to be supportive, and felt properly disgusted with himself that in his heart of hearts he was relieved that the damn thing was gone.

Nekomata.  
Cat Sidhe.  
Superstitious nonsense. Fiddleford McGucket prided himself as a man of science- willing to embrace the weird only when the evidence pointed that way. No cat would change that, no matter how peculiar a physical mutation it had lived with. 

That didn’t stop him from dropping his books and shrieking when he saw the cat again, darting out from behind a bush to give chase to a squirrel who couldn’t scamper fast enough. The black cat pounced and caught the little gray squirrel in its claws. 

Fiddleford watched in morbid fascination, having never witnessed a predator who had successfully captured prey. It didn’t go for the kill, just toyed with it, never giving it room enough to flee but enough for the poor creature to twitch and try to make a break for it. The cat tilted its head in an eerie mimicry of a scientist with a fascinating specimen, but its eyes held all the sadism of a monster toying with a victim.

That last bit Fiddleford had just imagined. For heaven’s sake it was a cat, a wild cat with a wild squirrel, that was its nature. He couldn’t fault a cat for catching prey- law of the jungle, might makes right, what else could he expect of it?

Fiddleford started to pick up his dropped things, not wanting to stay for the grizzly conclusion.

And yet…

The cat’s pronged tail swished in the air and it looked up from its prey, actually looked up at Fiddleford with golden gleaming eyes.

He wanted to say it was out of pity for the squirrel, that sounded nobler than the truth: the eyes of the cat made his blood run cold, he couldn’t stand those eyes, that tail, that damn cat! He hurled a book- he’d never had a good arm but it would scare the cat off, wouldn’t it? No- his terror made him lob that book harder and truer than he’d tell himself he’d meant to, and the corner of the book smacked the cat in the head.

It stumbled, and the squirrel sprinted off.

The cat continued to stumble, trying to steady itself. It didn’t make a sound as it fell over.

Fiddleford looked around- the usually populated walkway was empty, not a soul around. Fiddleford, his books, and the dead cat.

He walked forward, slowly, to grab his book. Bent over, keeping his eyes on the cat’s body. “Didn’t mean to,” he whispered frantically, “I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to-“

No use talking to it. He looked at his book, his weapon, the copy of Faust he needed for his English class requirement. A bit of red on the corner made his stomach lurch. Dear God, he had not meant to throw like that- but it was a five-hundred page book with a hard cover, not exactly light reading. He might as well have thrown a brick.

He picked up the book and looked into a golden eye. He screamed. The cat hissed, one eye bright gold and the other a bloody mess. Fur on end and its claws extended, it looked ready to take vengeance.  
Then, it took off running back into the bushes, and took with it Fiddleford’s peace of mind. Fiddleford sat in the grass for a full minute, bewildered and terrified. He could only snap out of his reverie when he saw people heading his way, students heading to or from class. Gathering up his things, he headed off quick as he could to find an out of the way dumpster to throw out the book, and wiped his hands clean of the whole thing. 

 

About ten years after the encounter with the cat, he met with Stanford Pines as a research partner in the town of Gravity Falls. The years had made him wiser, he liked to think, and college had opened his mind to new possibilities, new ideas without which he doubted he would have agreed to help Stanford out at all. Plus, refusing the request meant turning down the chance to work on a world-changing project and Fiddleford hungered for knowledge and glory as much as Stanford.

The evidence led them to the weird: things that his dear Irish Catholic grandma would have crossed herself over and over to even hear described. Creatures and concepts kept in the dark from all of humanity, and he was part of the two man team to bring it all to light.

Fiddleford worked relentlessly on the portal from a purely mechanical and engineering standpoint, Stanford was the one with the theories and formulas pulled seemingly out of nowhere and all just mad enough to work. He talked about a creature he’d met in his dreams, a muse with the answers they needed and…well, by that point Fiddleford had witnessed stranger things. Not like they didn’t need the help, anyway.

He walked in on Stanford’s meditation in the circle he’d drawn up in his secret study. He looked up to the picture of the pyramid, Bill Cipher. That single eye, a pupil narrow and lacking an iris completely. He couldn’t not think of the damn cat, the bloodied book…

Stanford opened his eyes. Yellow eyes with a sliver of a pupil running down in a straight line. A smile so crooked it made Stanford’s face look distorted. 

When he set his sights on Fiddleford his eyes, his damn eyes, held all the sadism of a monster toying with a victim.

Fiddleford backed up as the muse or demon laughed at his fright.

Nekomata.  
Cat Sidhe.  
Mephistopheles.  
Bill Cipher.

**Author's Note:**

> For fellow yokai enthusiasts: the nekomata (two-tailed cat) is sometimes seen as an older and more powerful bakeneko (monster cat). In some anime I've seen bakeneko used as a catch all for cat spirits, but since the sources I used make a distinction, I decided to go with nekomata, even though bakeneko is a little more well known (or at least a little easier for someone to figure out if they know a bit of Japanese). Nekomata are also, I believe, more malicious towards humans than bakeneko, who can go either way.
> 
> I know "McGucket" is a made up name, but I ran with the idea that Fiddleford's family is Irish. The Cat Sidhe ("cat shi") is more of a Scottish creature, but it also comes up in Irish folklore. They were HUGE black cats (like the size of a dog) with white spots on their bellies. They weren't necessarily evil, but like most of the sidhe they could fuck your shit up. 
> 
> ((Fun fact! One sidhe is actually fairly well known in the United States, though one might not guess from the spelling: Bean Sidhe. In the Anglicized spelling, you get the wailing "banshee"! ))
> 
> I couldn't help it with the Faust reference OTL Bill might be equilateral most of the time, but to me he's always Mephistopheles the Isosceles.


End file.
